Super weeks are behind us, which means this rollercoaster LCO season is set to begin its final descent towards playoffs.
Chiefs still jostle for top spot, Mammoth still think they can jostle for fifth spot, and have Gravitas stop jostling for roster spots?! Who only knows…
Today’s docket sees a fairly straightforward set of games.
Order should comfortably account for Gravitas, and need to make short work of results like this to hold fourth over the Dire Wolves.
The Chiefs will obliterate Mammoth, but it may be fun to see how long Mammoth can keep up the resistance before that obliteration occurs.
Dire Wolves can make the end of the season very interesting if they drop their match to Kanga and give the improving Boing Boing Gang a sniff at postseason, but I don’t expect that to happen.
The only lure of a close match comes at the main event of the evening in which Peace will reload from a shock super week loss to Gravitas with a win over Pentanet.GG
Perry’s Pick of the Week: Peace (Have lost exclusively to first and last) vs Pentanet.GG (Will lose to anyone, anytime, anywhere)
As always, Peace vs Pentanet is full of tantalizing matchups.
All eyes will rightly be on the junglers, as both Thomas “LeeSA” Ma and Choi “BalKhan” Hyun-jin are the catalysts for their team. I give a narrow edge to LeeSA in this matchup as I think he performs better when he doesn’t get ahead early than BalKhan does, though it is an almighty task to stop the powerfully-built Korean once he is up and running.
The mid lane battle is particularly delicious. Others may be frothing about Yao “Apii” Jian-Jing’s laning prowess but he’s overall a low econ player and has mediocre underlying numbers. This is definitely a symptom of their Chayon-and-Thien focus, but I also don’t think he performs as well as he otherwise could after fifteen minutes. Cha “Yuri” Hee-min also doesn’t hit as hard as he should in the mid-late game, but at least he is the benefactor of more resources which helps at giving him a better shot at producing for his team.
The top laners, I think, tell the story of these two teams. Romeo “Thien” Tran is an offensive dynamo in the league. He gets the most gold, does the most with it, and generally provides a lot for his team. Kim “Winterer” Dong-geun is the low economy, team facilitating top laner, generally speaking. He has mediocre or worse stats everywhere except laning – so one can argue he’s playing the same role for his team that Peace asks of Apii.
If PGG can skirmish and get Winterer involved then the proactivity they showed in particular on Wednesday last week has a chance to come to the forefront. If left unchecked, however, Thien can bottle up Winterer and hamstring PGG’s fighting.
This is why the jungle matchup will be so important. It isn’t even necessarily about ganking, though that would be a means to an end, but if BalKhan can provide Winterer space to operate with his team, then that turns PGG’s gameplan online.
If he can’t, then they’re trying to teamfight with a Thien that is potentially out of control and a Wang “Chayon” Yun-Cheng that they can’t match.
All things considered, I think this is not just the match of the day but the match of the whole week. I think both teams have avenues to victory, and either side winning would not necessarily be a surprise – but I think Peace have a few more options and thus I am tipping them – very narrowly – over a PGG side that showed the beginnings of what I wanted to see on Wednesday of last week.
I did say that I would pick Peace until they gave me a reason not to, but as bad as it was and as much as they were punished for it, disrespecting Gravitas isn’t quite going to get me there.
My Pick: Peace in a squeaker
Perry’s Week 7 Day 1 Predictions
Order over Gravitas
The Chiefs over Mammoth
Dire Wolves over Kanga
Peace over Pentanet
LCO Week 7 starts tonight. Pentanet and Peace collide from 10pm AEDT. Catch up on all the split details in our ultimate coverage hub.
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